I've finally fooled someone else into doing my work for me! My friend Susan has graciously offered her thoughts for your consideration this week...as we prepare to graduate on Saturday!! I can't help but relate to a lot of what Susan says, all I told her was that the theme was "what are you thinking about as you prepare to graduate?" I think she done good...
4 DAYS!!! (holy crap)
----
Jumbled thoughts from a jumbled cadet
As my final week at West Point is beginning, the more apprehensive I feel myself becoming. I want to leave this place so badly that I cannot help but think that something is going to prevent me from doing so. I’m not one to get in trouble; I’ve never walked an hour. Still, there is that feeling that as I start to hope and get excited about graduation that something will snatch it all away.
I’ve also started to write thank you notes to the teachers I enjoyed having. I’m not sure how the real world works. Sure, I’ve gotten brief glimpses of it from time to time, but soon I will be a part of it. Everyone says it is good to keep in contact with old instructors for letters of recommendation later on, or even just as mentors. Since I’m not sure how that works exactly, I’ve decided the first step is to say thank you. After that, I guess I’ll just send them emails every few months in attempt to forge a professional/personal relationship that transcends the classroom.
It’s funny how the end of something is the beginning of another. I’ve hated West Point with a passion for the past few years. Sometimes I’m alright with it, and sometimes I even like it a little bit. For the most part, however, I have spent a great deal of time hating it. I don’t like mountains. I don’t like when it is cold for so long. I don’t like and cannot begin to comprehend how people can fail to adhere to the simplest rules/regulations. The weather has started to turn nice again, and everything is turning green. It makes me happy beyond imagine, for it means graduation is coming. Everything looks beautiful that it tries to make you forget the wicked winter that wouldn’t seem to end. I’ll be leaving West Point ecstatic that it is over. People say that cadets start to miss West Point on an average of 16 months after graduation. I don’t plan on ever missing West Point. I may look back and remember, but I do not think I will ever want to go back to the time when I was a cadet.
Showing compassion and caring for those you lead is step two in my philosophy. The people you lead are essential to accomplishing your tasks and in achieving your vision. Without a caring spirit for your subordinates, their needs will likely suffer. No human acts at or near their potential while their needs, regardless of complexity, are denied by those to whom it is entrusted. Leaders must know and address the needs of their people, which starts with the simple yet essential idea of caring. Care enough to find out what your subordinates need, care enough to find out how you can make their life better, and care enough to act on such knowledge.
This is a great instance to bring in and apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. This theory is visualized as a pyramid, with the needs of the individual starting at the bottom with the most basic needs and progressing to the top and the higher-order needs. The trick is that the basic, lower order needs must be fulfilled before one progresses to the next higher need. At the very base of the pyramid are physiological needs- biological maintenances such as food, water, clothing, and shelter. Next are safety needs- security, protection, and stability in daily life and everyday occurrences. Third on the hierarchy theory are social needs- a sense of belonging, personal and fulfilling relationships, and love and affection. When these lower-order needs are met, the leader can start looking at higher-order needs of their subordinates. The fourth step on the pyramid is esteem- respect, prestige, recognition, need for self-esteem, and a personal sense of competence. At the very top, the fifth level of the pyramid, is self-actualization- the need to fulfill oneself and use one’s abilities to the fullest extent.
I have been privileged to see first-hand how this theory can be applied alongside with this tenet of caring for your subordinates. During the course of my service year, I spent a considerable amount of time “on duty” at a transitional house for the homeless. The stated goal of the program was to take individuals that were stable (not mentally ill or victims to substance abuse and addiction) and give them a place to stay free of charge, as well as other individualized assistance, to aid in their rise from difficult circumstances. We wanted people to gain full-time employment, save their earned money, and eventually get their own apartment. Here is a clear application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. Many of the people that we took into the house were below the first level of the hierarchy of needs, so we got them started on the path to success with things many take for granted- a place to come home to every night, a bed to sleep in, a shower, and three square meals. It is amazing what a solid dinner and a good night’s rest can do to cure a downtrodden soul. The need for safety was also met by our program. This was not only the physical safety provided by locks on doors, but more importantly the stability of having that same home to retire to every day, surrounded by the same people. Those same people provide the third level need. Personal relationships evolve and bring a greater sense of purpose and joy into a person’s life. We often saw with residents that did not get along with each other an inability to focus on their individual needs and goals of getting out of homelessness. Conflict resolution by the staff was key so that the residents could focus not on the conflicts at hand, but rather their needs.
By simply providing a safe, secure, and consistent environment for a homeless person, their lower-order needs having been met, they are ready and motivated to better themselves and make tangible progress. It is easy for the leader to provide the lower-order needs, but impossible to do so with the higher-order needs of esteem and self-actualization. This is not to say that the leader’s involvement flat lines at the low to high transition, but rather that the type of assistance they provide becomes less concrete and more abstract, perhaps in the form of encouragement. Inside all of this, however, remains a constant and caring sprit by the leader. The leader must care enough to only to provide the lower-level needs, but also to encourage fulfillment of the higher-level needs by the subordinate.
See this post for background if you don't know what they heck I'm talking about below.
----
Caring for oneself is the base of this idea of compassion in leadership. While this can also be construed and carried out in a negative fashion, the general thought is to take care of yourself before you try and take care of anyone else. This idea makes perfect sense. One cannot be an effective leader of others if they do not have their own lives taken care of and under control. In a show of unbeknownst self-awareness, I made the decision to leave the Academy last year. There were many thoughts and feelings that pushed me in the direction of this decision. First, I was unsure of my desire to commit to the service obligation of five years in the Army assumed by a 2rd class cadet. Taking an opportunity to fully process and consider this life altering decision was important to me, and fits the aforementioned principle of being sure of yourself before you try and assist others in such matters. With the decision sufficiently mulled over and my commitment complete, I feel better prepared to assist others in making the same decision. My advice in such matters is simply an iteration of my own thoughts and feelings when faced with the decision. So not only did I benefit from the introspective questioning of my motives and wants at this point in my life, but those who ask for and/or receive my advice also benefit.
Of my many motivations to take a year away, one was to square away some facets of my life that I saw as lacking, spirituality being the central component. I made the decision that my faith would be a primary and integral motivator for me as a leader. In another showing of unbeknownst self-awareness, I saw that the very thing that I wanted to be secure in and that I wanted to help me through not only my time in the service but also through life, was the very thing that I lacked the most. I took the experience of others into account as well, some people having recounted to me the difficulties of living a strong faith life while in the Army and especially while deployed in a combat zone. This played a role in my selection of a service organization to work with. Since I sought a stronger sense of faith in my life, I sought out an organization that would help me grow spiritually and that would nurture and encourage an increased sense of faith, as well as encourage new areas of growth and development. All of this took a sense of self-awareness. Without being self-aware at this point in my life, I might have prematurely jumped past a decision and into a situation for which I was not adequately prepared. This self awareness fits perfectly into the idea of caring enough for yourself that you take the steps, no matter how taboo or uncomfortable, to open yourself to new growth and better yourself.
The centrality of leadership revolves mainly about how you influence other people. It is therefore prudent to take lessons learned and consider how you will pass the knowledge gained from those lessons to other people. The takeaway from this idea of caring for yourself is that you cannot be an effective leader without first taking care of yourself, whether it be in a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual sense. Take the steps you feel are necessary to develop yourself, no matter how drastic they may seem. You will be glad you took the time to figure yourself out and so too will the people you come in contact with. This passing on of knowledge fits also into our next piece of compassion.
Here we go. Forgive me right off the bat dude, because I’m not going to respond to your comments at all. This is not because I haven’t read them or that I don’t respect your opinion, but rather that I think so strongly about this, I don’t think there is anything that someone can tell me that will change my mind. Again, I’m not knocking you or your reasoning, I think I just have to get this off my chest. Maybe give me another day and I’ll respond to your email specifically. But for now, here is Gib’s opinion of the situation. I have a lot of smaller thoughts and will try and expand upon them as best I can in the time I have.
First of all, I think it’s bullcrap that people would try and blame this on the stresses of battle. That’s the kind of reasoning people try and use to downplay the severity of the Mi Lai massacre. If you are going to use that argument, that Battalion Commander has to admit that he did a less than poor job of preparing his unit for the rigors of a deployment. Yes, being in theater is stressful and there are inexplicable attitudes and emotions that come out and are experienced by our soldiers, but I really think that this is fallacious.
My next thought is of precedence. This is something that I have thought more about in recent times, especially since that was the one thing that Duane had to say to me that one fateful Friday meeting. If we allow this one case to happen, what does that mean for the future. These sort of “do whatever it takes to accomplish your goal” actions only serve to foster an anything goes attitude. A soldier who thinks he can take liberties in theater is a dangerous thing for a lot of reasons.
One of those reasons and I think another thing we have to look at is what sort of repercussions take place from situations like this. While it is nothing on the scale of Abu Ghraib, it certainly doesn’t add to our image in country. People look at our soldiers (who aren’t exactly welcome in all areas) and see that they’ll do pretty much anything they want, their respect for us just plummets that much more. The war in Iraq isn’t going to be won by how many terrorists or freedom fighters or whatevers we kill, its going to be how well we get their people on board with our plan and get them to buy into our vision of democracy for them. This of course is a whole other issue that I won’t touch here, but the principle applies.
And along those lines, look at it with reversed roles. There aren’t too many Iraqi’s that appreciate what this guy did I’m sure. But we think it’s okay because it might have saved some lives on our side (which almost suggests that our brand of human being is better than theirs). I’m of course looking at the situation with the idea that there was no guarantee that this prisoner had the sought details or was even a threat in the first place. That’s the whole thing with waterboarding- after awhile the subject tells you whatever they think you want to hear. But I digress. There have been cases where people (usually terrorists of some variety) have captured American citizens and tortured them, beheaded them, whatever. Now to many Iraqi’s, we are no better than the average terrorist. My military science teacher was just telling me a story today of how in his first deployment he was on a convoy. The convoy just started firing during the movement. They didn’t actually see anything, someone just got scared and opened up. Everyone else joined it because someone else was shooting, the convoy stopped, and for a minute or so people were just shooting. At nothing. In a city. How can an Iraqi citizen see something like that and think that we are there to help them? And that isn’t even a bad story. Again I’m digressing. So there is obviously an enormous amount of national outrage when a citizen of ours gets beheaded by some hooded dudes on Al Jazeera. Understandable. Imagine the outrage by Iraqi citizens when something like this goes down. This is the whole idea of our actions sometimes doing more harm than good. We convert more people to terrorism than terrorists do I think. These actions need to be publicly condoned (they were to some extent) and this guy needs to be made an example of. First, making an example of him gets all our soldiers on the same page with interrogation- there are set rules and you just don’t say f*ck it when things get tough. Second, making an example of him shows the Iraqi people that we do give a shit about them and that we aren’t going to just slap war criminals like him on the wrist and let him go.
LTC West also tread a very slippery slope here and made it slippery for future generations of deployed soldiers. Now this is an extreme way of putting it, but if we condone crap like this we are next saying that torture is cool too. Whatever it takes to save American lives, screw the other guy and his rights as a human being. LTC West was quoted after some of this started going down as saying that in war you have a moral responsibility to protect the soldiers in your command. I disagree and would reword his statement. Commanders have a responsibility to protect their soldiers; they have a moral responsibility to act morally. We can’t have rogue officers going around doing whatever the heck they want on a whim. This situation went from interrogation to torture. What LTC West did was pure torture and that is not cool in my book.
One last thought I had was of the circumstances surrounding this guy’s capture. People were certain that he was plotting and/or had information of an attack that was going to take place against American soldiers. It’s as if this was some special case in which Americans were targeted and we were going to do whatever it took to stop it from happening. HELLO? THIS IS A WAR! Our soldiers are targeted every day by hundreds of dumbasses that decide they want to make a bomb in their garage and kill Americans. This is no special case (to my knowledge). And if it’s okay with this situation, then it pretty much becomes okay to do this stuff whenever you want, as long as it saves American lives. Again, I have this feeling that such an attitude is saying that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives. I don’t agree at all.
